22 November 2016, One Step off the Grid, Victoria town (Newstead) calls for partners for 100% renewable energy plan. he Victorian town of Newstead is seeking proposals from potential project partners who could help refine its plan to reach 100 per cent renewable energy within 5 years, and which could act as a blue-print for other towns in the state to follow. Newstead, a town of around 500 people, is considered a flagship project project for the state, and is looking to build up its renewable energy capacity and then integrate these into the local grid with battery storage and new “energy market” ideas. Tosh Szatow, director for Energy for the People, which is advising the township, says the call for expressions of interest is designed to flush out ideas from solar companies, retailers, trading platforms and others that could be adapted to the town’s plans. “We have sketched out a plan, and know what a model could look like,” Szatow says. “Now we want to test some of this thinking and identify some of the partners that could help in the project.” The Newstead plan is seen as a fore-runner for other towns and cities in the state, and elsewhere in Australia. And far from being a rogue proposal, the idea has the support of the state Labor government and even the local network operator, Powercor, which is co-operating on data, network capacity and tariff design. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2016
22 November 2016, Renew Economy, Climate conspiracy grips Senate as Coalition attacks latte-sipping opponents of coal. The influence of president-elect Donald Trump’s attack on “elites” is taking hold in the Australian parliament, with the Coalition attacking “latte-sipping” opponents of coal mining and joining enthusiastically in a debate questioning climate science in the Senate. Frydenberg was asked in question time by Greens MP Adam Bandt about a US government report delivered in at the Marrakech climate talks that warned, amongst other things, of a 1.5m rise in sea levels by 2050 if greenhouse emissions continued at current levels. Frydenberg responded by claiming that Australia had an “ambitious” climate target for 2030 and had been praised “for innovation” and its work on carbon capture and storage at the recent climate talks in Marrakech. A few hours later, Canada announced it would phase out traditional coal fired generation by 2030 as part of its “vision for a clean growth economy”. The UK is phasing out coal by 2023, and France is phasing out coal too, although it has taken a rain check on that idea because one third of its nuclear fleet are sidelined by safety concerns.“It it is okay for the member for Melbourne to put his sandals up on the seat, sip his soy latte, sit in the streets of Brunswick and say that it is the end of coal,” but coal would continue to be part of the mix for decades to come, Frydenberg said. Read More here
21 November 2016, Yale Climate Connections, Fuel Cells: Promising, but struggling to catch on. Fuel cells are efficient, generate clean electricity, and they run around the clock. So why aren’t we using them on a mass scale? Fuel cells have been the next best clean-energy thing for, well, a long time. The byproducts of that reaction are heat and water. The heat can be recycled into the fuel cell itself and/or used for external heating and cooling – generally referred to as combined heat and power. That makes stationary fuel cells – the kind used for electricity, as opposed to ones used in vehicles – extremely efficient and as clean an energy source as solar and wind.A technology with roots in the 1800s and modern-day use in every NASA-manned space flight from Apollo through the end of the space shuttle program, fuel cells just kind of look like a big box. Inside, they electrochemically combine hydrogen and the oxygen from ambient air to create electricity. But because the hydrogen source for most fuel cells comes from natural gas, they are generally not considered renewable, leaving them in an environmental limbo. Read More here
20 November 2016, New York Times, A Wrenching Choice for Alaska Towns in the Path of Climate Change. SHAKTOOLIK, Alaska — In the dream, a storm came and Betsy Bekoalok watched the river rise on one side of the village and the ocean on the other, the water swallowing up the brightly colored houses, the fishing boats and the four-wheelers, the school and the clinic. She dived into the floodwaters, frantically searching for her son. Bodies drifted past her in the half-darkness. When she finally found the boy, he, too, was lifeless. “I picked him up and brought him back from the ocean’s bottom,” Ms. Bekoalok remembered. The Inupiat people who for centuries have hunted and fished on Alaska’s western coast believe that some dreams are portents of things to come. But here in Shaktoolik, one need not be a prophet to predict flooding, especially during the fall storms. Laid out on a narrow spit of sand between the Tagoomenik River and the Bering Sea, the village of 250 or so people is facing an imminent threat from increased flooding and erosion, signs of a changing climate. With its proximity to the Arctic, Alaska is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the United States and the state is heading for the warmest year on record. The government has identified at least 31 Alaskan towns and cities at imminent risk of destruction, with Shaktoolik ranking among the top four. Some villages, climate change experts predict, will be uninhabitable by 2050, their residents joining a flow of climate refugees around the globe, in Bolivia, China, Niger and other countries. Read More here